Archive for October, 2009

Some people may think my views on business are fanciful and idealistic, and that may be true. However, I’ve been in the sales game long enough to know taking an approach that is anything less only limits success to a lucky few.

I don’t mind people voicing their opinions on matters they are genuinely passionate about; in fact, I encourage it. I’m always enthusiastic to hear when someone has something authentic and valuable to say. There is an abundance of creativity in our world. Humanity is replete with inspirational people who have enormous value to contribute in their own ways ― yet most are never seen or heard.

As a collective society, we seldom encourage others to take a path of true innovation because it’s untested, risky, and breaks convention and related reputations. Most of us are trained to do things based on what’s already been done, and that’s ok, but being led to believe it’s the best and only way― isn’t. I’m here to say, there’s always a higher and more powerful way if you dare to jump off the cliff of ‘certainty’ into the unknown realms of ‘possibility.’

I can tell you without hesitation the ‘buyer’ wins hands down every time! Why? The buyer contributes to us usually by adding to our success or financial wellbeing.

In the heady pursuit of success, the fatal mistake many salespeople make is they ‘sell’ and self-promote all the time. This trains people to ignore them much like TV ads that are in your face so much, after a while we simply don’t see or hear them.

So with more people selling, (than ever!) than buying, how do you compete in an overcrowded and self-focused market place?

Sharpen your focus and target small groups of people you are confident you can contribute to most.

Your existing (best) customers will provide the clarity you need to establish this. Less is more, work in a narrow pipe and leverage each call by communicating with benefits, specialised knowledge and commonality ― this helps build rapport and develops foundations of trust.

Cold-calling is as much about process, support and leverage as it is about dealing with rejection and maintaining enthusiasm. You have to work to a structured plan and initiative contact as you would a warm referral, i.e. I know who you and your competitors are ― and the reason for my call is to help you, just like I have helped others in your space.

Your reason for contact, either cold-call or warm referral, must be of substance and not just another random-act-of-selling.

I also encourage people to take the time (prior to making initial contact) to understand who your calling and how you can contribute to them most, and make that the sole reason for your call.

I encourage people to cold-call by coming from a place of ‘contribution’ first; I call this approach ‘buying-in’. In highly resistant sales executions, like cold-calling, you have to buy-in before you can successfully sell-in because the mass of cold-callers that have gone before you, have trained your customers to ignore you.

How important is being ‘believable’ when you’re selling? It’s the most important thing!

The number one killer that will stop any salesperson dead in their tracks, even the really confident ones, is their inability to instil trust in their customers.

Being believable is not just getting people to follow you ― it’s also their willingness and peace of mind during the process. Being believable is easier to achieve when you truly believe in what you are selling ― so sell something or be a part of a business that you truly believe in.

A great way to develop your believability is to engage in believable activities outside of your chosen profession.

Sales training exercise: Next time you’re at the supermarket doing your grocery shopping ― volunteer to carry someone’s bags to their car for them. I guarantee your request will be met with hesitation and even some trepidation. The natural response to such a request would be the obvious, “what’s the catch?”

But there is no catch. All you’re doing is offering to help someone in some way without reward or recognition. How you overcome the other persons reaction to your offer to help them, is how you train yourself to be more believable.

If you are genuine about helping others, you need to develop a way of being that enables you to cut-through your customers fear and get to a place of trust with real value and benefits.

Remember: Training yourself to be believable only works if you are genuine about helping others! Imposters need not worry themselves with this type of activity.

Contributing to others without repayment is not only rewarding in itself, it helps you to develop your inner belief. So when it comes to selling all you have to do is believe in yourself and the selling part takes care of itself.

You don’t demonstrate that you are genuinely interested in others by being totally self-focused. The mistake many businesses make is ―everything they do and say is all about me, me, and me!

Have you ever been out for coffee with someone you just met and all they did was talk about them the entire time? I bet you left the exchange somewhat drained of energy and totally disinterested in this person. Businesses, like people, are much the same.

When you meet or speak with a new customer, don’t take this opportunity to tell them everything about you, instead make it about them. Furthermore, take this moment to transcend your genuine interest in them into a valuable relationship with very real benefits.

How to be ‘interesting’ in business tips:

- Make what you do and say all about your customers

- Lead with getting to know others first, before getting others to know you

- Listen and feel the underlying emotions of what’s really being said

- Always communicate in benefit terms

- Never lead with ‘me’ – Always align values and add value and make it ‘we’

For a living, I consult with and develop salespeople and businesses, and I can categorically state, leading with ‘it’s all about me’ much like many traditional selling practices – is a waste of time.

Much more effective is an approach that enables you to align values and add-value to create and develop a relationship that is about us and we, (never me!)

You better believe it! Does it really matter if you’re right? Yes it does, but not at the expense of making your customer wrong.

If I had to choose between being right and losing a valued customer – and being wrong and helping my customer see the situation as their opportunity – I would be wrong every time.

There is such power in admitting to others that we are wrong (if you dare,) particularly if you are learning and growing from the experience. This demonstrates you have substance and real character – certainly enough, not to indulge in the great delusion of being perfect.

Why do so many people need to be right? Because it validates who they desire others to believe they are. And in the cut throat dog eat dog world of business being wrong can cost you. It takes a strong person to admit when they are wrong, particularly when their reputation or financial loss is at stake.

Customers want to be right simply because they are paying for the privilege. If you make your customer wrong, make no mistake – everyone loses. You lose their patronage (yes, they will leave in the pursuit of being right) and they lose your ability to fulfil their needs and aspirations.

Understand the power of being wrong and use it as leverage to build long lasting relationships with righteous customers.

When you’re right and your customer is ‘blatantly’ wrong, don’t take this opportunity to highlight their humility and boast your superiority ―instead choose to take the higher ground (empathy) and transcend their wrong into a right that benefits both you and them.

Two wrongs can indeed make a right, but it takes empathy and a willingness to see others from a different perspective.

The footy season may be over, but unlike footballers, salespeople are expected to be on their game all year round!

Don’t let summer be your slow sales period. Empower your salespeople to perform and kick goals through all seasons! The Sales Success Seminar is facilitated by Trent Leyshan, founder at BOOM Sales! Trent is widely regarded as one of the Australia’s most inspirational sales presenters.

The outcomes of the sales success seminar include:

• Understand your 6 Pillars (P’s) for exceptional Selling
• Establish your own personal ‘Unique Selling Proposition’
• Learn how to prioritise value and maximise your time
• Recognise your most important and influential personality traits
• Understand how to maintain your SalesStamina™ in a demanding role
• Learn the principles of RetroService™ for greater customer satisfaction
• Be introduced to the customer-centric EmpathySelling™ Process

Who should attend?

Salespeople and sales leaders who desire to enhance overall sales performance and elevate their success.

Some may find the concept of salespeople not asking for the business, strange even ludicrous, given ‘the close’ has traditionally been a salesperson’s end-game.

Not asking for the business at the end of your sales-process is analogous to: a football player running down the sideline and struggling to avoid the clutches of would-be tacklers − to then just sit-down on their bum and scratch their head, an inch before the goal line. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense! Yet in sales, this type of conduct is surprisingly common.

Why do businesses spend enormous amounts of time, money, and resources investing in salespeople and developing (hopefully) effective sales initiatives, to then have salespeople balk and completely avoid the final step? Well, it comes down to two key areas: A lack of ‘confidence’ and ‘commitment’ in what are how they sell.

Not asking for the business is a symptom of a lack of confidence, and that is always a sub-symptom of a lack of commitment. To avoid disappointment of hearing yet another, “no,” or, “we’ll think about it” the salesperson simply chooses not to ask for the business, by doing so, preserving their ‘fragile’ ego from the pain of being rejected, yet again.

One of the most effective ways to harness your fear of rejection ― is to be fully committed to what you are doing. Much like jumping into the deep-end of a freezing cold swimming pool! You can stand on the edge of the pool frozen in anticipation of your reaction to the icy water. Alternatively, you can slowly lower yourself down into the water bit-by-excruciating-bit, screaming aloud as you go! Both these methods do little but enhance the pain and suffering.

The best way to get into an icy cold pool, if you’re Bold enough, is to enthusiastically jump into the air – clutch both your knees and bomb dive into the freezing water, with an almighty Splash!!! We all know that after a few seconds our body adjusts to the new temperature and we are then responsible for egging everyone else into the water to join us!

Asking for the business is much the same. When you are at the final stage in your sales – process your ability to be confident and committed in this moment will largely determine your success. Particularly if you have aligned all your steps up to this point correctly. At this point, you must see your customer’s reaction (if negative) as only a temporary response and that by jumping-in and asking for the business, you are then provided with information to more effectively address any concerns or objections the customer may have that prevent them from making the right decision.

Some salespeople find the chilly response of ‘silence’ too painful to bear, so they continue to speak after they ask for the business to avoid the uncomfortable sensation of silence. They forget silence is purposeful. If you are comfortable and confident in silence you demonstrate you are committed to your cause. If the customer is silent it shows they are genuinely considering their response. So don’t be too scared of silence when closing – it’s a supreme and necessary thing.

By refusing to take-on a customer’s (potential) chilly response, you are removing the capacity to create your desired outcome: to make the sale! By avoiding perceived short term pain you are also taking away long term gain. If you’re not asking for the business, you’ll never make it into the pool, let alone develop your swimming ability.

Tips to be more confident:

- Know your stuff!

- Follow a clear and consistent process

- Be passionate about what you do

- Dedicate yourself to never ending improvement

- Strive to carve out win-win outcomes

- Thrive on constructive criticism

- Use every opportunity, both positive and negative, to grow!

Remember: When you are fully committed to a cause: you become more confident and when you are confident: you instil confidence in others.

Commitment also requires a process and a way of doing things that enables you to develop your skills and confidence until you become exceptional at it!

When I visit a website and find one long page that scroll’s down for eternity, what I quickly realise is that this site isn’t about capturing my imagination: it’s about acquiring my information.

Don’tmake the mistake of creating a website that is purely designed to lead people through a preconceived process. Having a process is essential, but not before your customers have ‘buy-in’. To extract customer information before there is an established relationships or some form of emotive connection is only going to put people off. Sure, the internet is vast source of information and contains unlimited realms off opportunity. But don’t abuse it simply because can or just because others are – you’re better than that!

I visited the site of a person who recently followed me on Twitter. This guy had a cool picture and fun Bio on his profile. Curious to learn more, I clicked from Twitter through to his site. When I arrived at the website, I found one long page with multiple ‘sign-up here’ boxes designed to give away free information and capture my details. I guess, in the hope my curiosity would eventually get the better of me and result in some form of transaction downstream.

As a consequence of this person’s blatant online sales approach, he lost all credibility with me. I went to this website eager to find out more about this person and his credentials. I wanted to read about his story and what type of work he did and whom he served as clients. Instead, I felt the distinct and uneasy sensation of being sold something that I didn’t need nor want. My curiosity to learn more about this person was replaced with an uncomfortable feeling of being led down a garden path.

Your website should be a warm, fun place people can go to learn more about you, the real you. The site should reflect your core values and ideology and purpose and contain a compelling reason for your customers to contact you in some way. Not a series of submit boxes strategically positioned by a user experience ‘expert’ whose only purpose is to convert web hits into email addresses – so you can start an onslaught of meaningless tips and reasons others should buy from you.

A website used in the ‘right ways’ is a powerful marketing, promotions, and sales tool. Used in the ‘wrong ways’ a website becomes, much like a wet and limp handshake – a deal breaker.

Make sure the first impression your website makes, like your salespeople, is interesting and sets a positive tone for a long and lasting relationship.